What Does Your Light Shine On?

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What time is it when your watch runs backwards?

Before I share with you the punchline to that joke, a little lead-in. Two years ago, I was on the airplane headed back to Southern after Christmas break. I looked down to see what time it was, only to discover that my watch was actually running backwards.

So what time is it when your watch runs backwards? Time to buy a new watch. And that is exactly what I decided to do.

Because I am a connoisseur of only the finest in timekeeping machinery, I headed straight to Wal-Mart. There were only about five hundred different watches to choose from, most of which were decidedly feminine looking. However, I did find one which wasn't too girlish, and for a whole $7.99 it became mine.

It ran nicely, and nothing appeared to be wrong with it. I was content and happy until one evening I glanced down at and become very amused and slightly disgusted. You see, this watch had a serious design flaw. The man who engineered it needs to lose his job at whatever Indonesian watch factory it came from.

It was a face watch, and oddly enough the numbers were painted with glow in the dark ink, but the hands weren't. So in the dark, the watch displays a glowing circle of numbers but no time.

One must wonder exactly what the reasoning behind this is supposed to be. If I were ever to forget how to count to twelve in the dark, I guess the watch would be usable, but otherwise it was pretty stupid. It was likely a manufacturing defect, but still, pretty stupid.

Matthew 5:14 sees Jesus calling his followers “The Light of the World.” What he meant was that we as Christians represent to the world what God is supposed to stand for. By our actions or “light” those who do not know God are supposed to get a picture of him through us.

However, as my watch quite accurately points out, not all light is created equal. The purpose of a watch is tell time, and the purpose of glow in the dark ink is to make it so the watch can tell time in the dark. But my watch didn't tell time in the dark, even though it had light.

You've already figured out where I'm going with this. Do your actions represent Christ? Do your actions betray who you serve? Or are you like my watch, sending out light with no real purpose? Many atheists point to the hypocrisy of Christians who claim to serve Christ but live no differently than the rest world. Don't be like that. Let your light shine and illuminate the nature of God.

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Matthew 5:14-15

As an aside, the watch talked about in this story broke awhile back. I bought a new one a few weeks ago, and both the numbers and the hands glow in the dark. But this one came from Target, so I'm really not surprised!

The week of computer problems

EDIT: Woah, my parents computer destroyed itself. It literally broke inside. Apparently after eight years of abuse they can do that. As a result, there won't be an update this week. The devotional I was working on (and was almost done with!) is still on my hard drive and I can access it when I get back to Southern...so I'll see you next week with something entirely different!

This Devotional About Supermodels is Not My Fault

This piece has a story behind it. At writer's club a few months back, one of the attendees was reading some riddles he had written. My response for all of them was "supermodel." Hey, it always made perfect sense, but I was the only one who thought so. Eventually, Jason ended up daring me to write about a supermodel for the next meeting.

So I did.

This Devotional About Supermodels is Not My Fault

So I was dared to write about a supermodel. While I know several girls who are pretty enough to be supermodels, they have chosen to devote their lives to more meaningful professions. I also don’t like to write fiction all that much. Therefore, I was left with only one option. I must write about a supermodel that I admire.

Finding admirable supermodels proved to be a laborious task. Yet, there is one model that I have had a “crush” on since fourth grade. Millions of people see her smiling face everyday, and she has been modeling for quite a few years. Despite this, she has completely avoided all of the scandals surrounding many of today’s glamour girls. No illegitimate children, no sex tapes, no anorexia accusations. Instead she provides young ladies with a positive, hard working role model.

Have I mentioned yet that she is gorgeous? She doesn’t look like one of those Hollywood girls, with lips the size of jet liners and artificial bosoms the size of…really big things. No, she looks like a normal girl you could see at the grocery store.

On top of all this, she was born in Fresno, California, just like me. While I have never actually met her, she is a prominent figure locally because of her international popularity.

I am talking, of course, about the Sun-Maid Raisin Girl. Ever since my mother packed those little boxes of raisins in my school lunches I have secretly admired her.

The media bombards us with images of what human beauty is supposed to be like. More often then not, it falls into the stereotype of a fit surfer styled man and a Playboy playmate. Physical appearance is made a major issue, to a greater degree towards young girls than boys. The media tells them that they must weigh a certain amount, dress a certain way, dye their hair a certain color, and et cetera.

I find the Sun-Maid Raisin girl very attractive. But a pretty face does not a happy marriage make. On the cover of the raisin box, her beauty lasts forever, but that isn’t the way things work in real life. In fact, having been in vineyards and having spent days picking grapes, I can assure you that if she continues in that line of work, by the time she is forty her face is going to look like the raisins she is pawning. Then, I hope that she has married a man who loves her for who she is, not because she has a gorgeous smile.

Our culture is a little confused as to what love actually is. Last year, National Geographic magazine ran an article about love. What do think made the cover? A picture of a young, attractive couple embracing in what appears to be a nightclub. This is not love, this is mere infatuation. Love is what you have after you’ve been married for fifty years. National Geographic should have shown a picture of two withered old people with canes and suspenders holding hands and called that “love,” instead.

Speaking of raisins, I believe a successful marriage is a lot like a raisin. Before you put this paper down and call me insane, hear me out.

Raisins start out as grapes, on a vine. Marriages often start out as a union between two young, naïve people. Consider a new marriage a grape. Not all grapes are created equal. Some are big, some are small. Some are perfectly round, others are downright deformed. Some are horrifically sour, some taste like mush, and some are wonderfully sweet. However, with few exceptions, all have the capacity to become a raisin.

Yet, grapes do not magically transform over time into raisins. A special process must be observed. If you throw a bunch of grapes into a closet and come back in a month expecting to find raisins, you are going to be wonderfully disappointed. You’ll find a pile of rotten pulp which at one point may have been grapes.

In order to create a raisin, two things must happen to a grape. They must be exposed to sunlight, and they must be kept dry. In order to have a successful, Christlike marriage, both the husband and the wife must expose themselves to the Son of God. As the grapes absorb more and more sunlight, they become dryer and the potential for rot is removed.

It is at this point, dear reader and or listener, that I abandon this paper. I say all of this with only the good intentions and wishful thinking of a single man who wants to be as Christ like as possible in his future marriage. Alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I am not qualified to say many of the things I have just said. But Jason dared me to write about supermodels and I thought about raisins and marriage and this is what happened. I will hopefully return to it someday when I have been married for some time and have some experience in such matters.

This Story Was Almost About Bulls

Wow, two days late and all I have to deliver is a recycled creative writing piece. Shame on me! Oh well.

I wrote this devotional over spring break at about three in the morning with a 100+ degree fever. Apparently, while semi-intoxicated I have a penchant for run-on sentences and lack of punctuation, as well as bizarre scripture choices. Yet, I can't bring myself to edit it...

Electric Fences

Bulls are one of those things that are better enjoyed on the other side of solid electrified steel. I know this from experience.

There was a time when my grandfather owned somewhere around ten bulls. I have no idea why because bulls have only a limited number of uses. You cannot milk them, you can only kill and eat them and we were vegetarians so that made them useless. We only had like three cows on the ranch and they were off by themselves so all these bulls, which were all bull by the way, had only each other’s company. This means they had no company at all.

They were all in one pen and angry about it. At night you would hear them a quarter mile away screaming at the moon. Bulls do not moo. They scream bloodcurdling screams of death. It was a chorus of perpetual agony.

I do not blame them because I know that if I was locked in a pen with nothing but other guys and no ladies ever came to visit I would start screaming at the moon too.

Anyways, I found standing outside their pen and observing their lonesome suffering to be a source of great amusement. They would turn and look at you, then bawl at you until saliva formed froth around their lip and started to come out in streams. It was obvious that they hated you with all the hatred they could muster, but they couldn’t do anything because there was an electric fence in the way.

Touching that fence hurt. I know for sure that electric fences hurt, because when I was in kindergarten my kindergarten girlfriend came to the farm and I tried to explain to her how electric fences worked. She asked how I knew they hurt when I had never touched one. I didn’t know either. So she dared me to grab it and see. We were such a caring couple, as you have observed.

I was smarter than that, though. I knew about conduction. I knew how electricity worked. I figured that if I touched it with something else I could see if it was really hot or not. So I grabbed a rubber garden hose and put it on the fence. Then I touched the garden house. I was surprised to see that nothing happened.

She still wanted me to touch the fence, and I did not want to disappoint a lady. Besides, I knew that electricity went through things, and since it didn’t come through the rubber hose then this fence must have been dead. So, in typical “see how manly I am” fashion, I grabbed the fence with both hands. I stopped crying some time the next day.

I still regret that our relationship did not survive the perils of first grade. I imagine that today she’d have me jumping in front of trains or shooting myself with a nail gun just to see if it hurt. Regardless, I learned a valuable lesson about materials with nonconductive properties.

Come to think of it, I learned another lesson, too. No, not about showing off in front of girls, I wouldn’t that lesson for quite some time, if at all. My parents had told me not to touch that fence, and not to put anything on it. I had unquestioningly obeyed until that day, when it seemed that my five year old manhood depended on touching that fence. I had to see if it hurt or not. I had very little if anything to gain from that knowledge, yet I still had to find out. It’s the same mindset Adam had when Eve brought him the Forbidden Fruit. He knew that eating it was a bad idea, but he didn’t want to look like a wimp. There are things out there we don’t have to experience to know if they’ll hurt us or not. We don’t have to experience that pain for ourselves to know that, we can look at the examples of so many other people who have already grabbed the fence and got shocked.

But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. Ephesians 5:3-4

What I Learned From A Card Game

Hm, a day late and a dollar short again. The demands of summer school have made deadlines difficult, so expect more delays in the future. This is an original piece, and I did a lot of scanning for it. Click on the card images to see an enlarged version.

What I Learned From A Card Game

I like table games. Be they card based or board-game style, I really enjoy them. Why sit around a TV all night when you can humiliate your friends and family at a game of skill and\or luck? I think more families would stick together if people just spent more time interacting with each other instead of passively watching fictitious cars explode.

I’m up for Monopoly, Risk, or even Hungary Hungary Hippos anytime, anywhere. If you know anything about these games, I claim the hat piece, Mexico, and the Green Hippo.

While you could probably derive some important life lessons from a game of Monopoly, I haven’t done so yet. That said, I was playing a card game with my family a few days ago that made me think a little.

That card game is Redemption. Redemption is a Christian Collectable Card Game. What that means is that it is instead of playing with pre-packaged decks of cards, each player constructs their own from the thousands of cards available. Cards come in booster packs and have varying degrees of rarity. My family has really enjoyed this game, and has spent many a Sabbath afternoon playing it since I bought the starter deck at a camp meeting Adventist Book Center ten years ago.

The basic idea of the game is to lead members of your “army of God” in battle against the “army of darkness” in order to rescue “lost souls.” It can be quite a bit more complex than that, but that's the general idea. All of the cards are based on biblical characters and events, even ridiculously obscure ones. Pretty much every bible character you can think of has a card, and quite a few you’ve never heard of have one too.

If you’ve ever wondered how Samson would have faired in a battle against Goliath (probably far better than against Jezebel), you can play it in the game. Or perhaps Simon Peter versus Haman? Ruth versus Judas Iscariot? Joshua versus the Whore of Babylon? It gets weirder than that, trust me.

Anyway, I decided I could make the game weirder than it already was. I used MS Paint to create an “Edward” hero, printed it out and glued it to the front of a worthless card, and surreptitiously slipped it into my deck. I figured that would highly amuse my family.

This meant that I was now a member of the “Army of God”, rubbing shoulders with guys like David, Paul, and Moses. I made my abilities considerably less than that of those characters, but it still felt pretty weird.

I drew the Edward card towards the end of the first game. At that point, I had been using a coalition led by Adino. I don’t really know who that is, but his scriptural reference (2^nd Samuel 23:8) says that he was “the Tachmonite that sat in the seat” and that he killed eight hundred people with his spear. Pretty cool guy. Anyway, he had successfully rescued four lost souls from the hordes of darkness.

Now, I had the Edward card. I was only one rescue away from victory, and figured it was time to reveal myself and win the game. I waited for my turn, and put my card down on the table in attack mode. The target was my brother’s captive souls, and he would have to fight me off, otherwise the game would belong to me.

After passing my ghetto homemade card around and after everybody laughed at it and me, the game went on. I was pretty confident that I had won this battle, after all, I had the “Sound the Alarm” card ready to play, which would allow two heroes to band together to rescue the soul. I would bring in my David card, and the two of us would be unstoppable. David is one of my favorite biblical characters, and I thought it would be pretty cool to win teamed up with him.

My brother didn’t put out an evil character to battle me though. Instead, he slammed the “Christian Martyr” card down on top of the “Edward” card. For those of you unfamiliar with a game, the “Christian Martyr” card means instant non-arguable death for a hero.

I had just been martyred. My turn was over. That was pretty unkind of him to do to his own brother. I should have attacked my mother instead. She ended up winning the game.

Thus my short foray into the realm of spiritual warfare ended.

Or has it? This experience made me start thinking about the heroes of the Bible. Some of them accomplished some pretty impressive things. Those of us raised in the church have had their stories drilled into our heads over and over again since cradle roll. It becomes easy to assign them legendary or superhuman status, to the point that we forget that they were all just like us: human.

Don’t tell me David wasn’t scared as he ran from Saul. Don’t tell me Daniel didn’t have his doubts as he was thrown into the lion’s den. Don’t tell me Noah worked on the Ark for a hundred years and never once considered that he may be insane. Don’t tell me Joshua never lost a little hope of making it to the Promised Land. Don’t tell me the constant beatings and stonings and shipwrecks and imprisonments never caused Paul’s enthusiasm to waver.

They weren’t working with anything that we don’t have. Arguably, it could be said that we have more than they did, what with the New Testament and religious liberty being the way it is. Still, they went out and did God’s will. They slipped up from time to time, as no person is without their Bathsheba moment, but ultimately they triumphed. They felt all the same emotions that we do, but the Bible still records them as heroes in The Army of God.

And there’s no reason we can’t overcome our weaknesses and enlist as well. I got “martyred” pretty quickly when I went out rescue “lost souls.” Are we willing to make that kind of commitment? Death doesn’t frighten me, but other things do.

I’m seriously considering going as a student missionary next year. Dedicating a year to God sounds like a very good thing, and I would very much like to do it. Still, I am reminded of the reasons I haven’t already done it. Just as I’m ready to make a commitment, my mind brings up a very plausible scenario of the negative things that might occur back home if I’m gone for a year. Still, the only reasons I can think of not to go are wholly selfish. God told Abraham to march across the desert into the unknown, national borders don’t seem all that bad in comparison.

Regardless of all this, in the game of Redemption, and in the reality of life, there are only two factions: The Army of God and The Army of Darkness. One cannot serve in the Army of God if they want only to please themselves. Risks must be taken, and we can only hope for the strength to take them. It’s the same dilemma faced by every Bible hero you can think of, and we must face it too.